Sweden

United Kingdom

United States

Companies may not be realizing the potential of BYOD

Implementing a bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policy does not make a company innovative on its own. In fact, many businesses are introducing BYOD in a manner that can actually work against employees' creativity and productivity.

Are you putting a damper on innovation?
Commonly, BYOD is thought of as employees using their own smartphones, laptops and tablets to complete tasks, access company information, or stay in contact with clients. However, a recent blog post on CIO.com by Mike Marx, a senior consultant with the end user computing group at VMware, suggested this conception needs to be broadened.

According to Marx, the next step is implementing a virtual desktop strategy, which can be an easy and effective way for businesses to give BYOD users everything they need to complete their daily tasks from anywhere, and at any time. Furthermore, it allows them to connect to corporate systems more easily, allowing IT departments to tackle more challenging issues.

"In short, it challenges the status quo and promotes productivity and creativity—and that's exciting for everyone," Marx wrote. "Too often, we (IT) end up creating new ways to prevent end-users from utilizing their desktop as a creative tool."

But BYOD isn't done yet
While BYOD seemed revolutionary to business processes when it was introduced, it's continuing to evolve whether companies get on board or not, requiring them to address several concerns. For example, a recent article from All Things D reported that firms need to address bring-your-own-cloud (BYOC).

BYOC is not trend. Instead, with BYOD and desktop virtualization advancing, companies will need to look at issues of duration and location when it comes to the cloud.

"BYOC is happening whenever an employee uses a public cloud to store or access company files," All Things D explained. "While undoubtedly convenient, the problem is that the majority of public cloud storage apps, like DropBox, simply aren't secure. Aside from being vulnerable to hacking, using a public cloud means employees could potentially have those files stored for the rest of their career, and beyond."

To address these security concerns, companies of all sizes may want to consider hiring outside IT network services to test their cloud systems and BYOD policies in order to make sure firms have control of who can certain information and for how long.